Point-Of-Sale (POS) terminals are often comprised of: a motherboard, one or more hard drives, and a variety of peripheral ports to interface peripheral devices to the motherboard. The peripheral devices can include such things as: network ports (such as Ethernet), monitors/displays, keyboard, card readers, scanners, cash drawer, receipt printer, camera, PINpad, signature input device, and the like.
The motherboard, hard drive(s), and peripheral ports are provided in a single housing and typically stowed under the cash drawer or somewhere in close proximity to the monitor and/or cash drawer.
Conventionally, the motherboard is designed with a front facing power on and off button and Light Emitting Diode (LED) indicators providing a visual status of what state the motherboard is in, e.g., on, off, working on some activity, etc. The Input/Output (I/O) peripheral ports are located in the rear of the motherboard. This configuration is believed superior so as to hide cabling cords connecting peripherals to the I/O peripheral ports while providing easy front access to the power button and the LED indicators.
However, in practice, the housing of the motherboard is usually placed on a shelf or in a cabinet with little available physical space to spare, such that removing the housing for service requires pulling the housing with attached cables entirely out of the cabinet or enclosure to access the I/O peripheral ports and associated cabling. In some situations this requires substantial physical dexterity to hold the housing with one hand while trying to disconnect one or more cables or attach a new cable to the I/O peripheral ports with the remaining hand. Moreover, a POS terminal's motherboard housing can have many cables attached, such that trying to figure out what cable goes where after disconnecting the cables can be problematic.
The time it takes to actually remove the housing from is enclosure or cabinet can also be more than a normal service operation (i.e., upgrading Random Access Memory (RAM), checking internal motherboard components, removing internal dust, etc.). Many retail stores can have hundreds of POS terminals, in integration trays that require annual preventive maintenance service. The time it takes a service engineer to just access the POS terminals for service is a significant percentage of total service time.